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The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

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Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#271
post #62

Crypto crashes every couple years and of course it has grown immensely since the last crash so the scale and scope of these kinds of “analyses” grow with it. I’d imagine in 5 years in the next big crash it will be the top news around the global for many weeks.

No, I think there is a natural limit - eventually you have enough people burned by the scams, crashes, hacks etc. who will keep away, to the point that you don't have enough new entrants to put enough money in to have continuing growth. Unless there was an actual crypto economy, but at this point, there's not much more than speculation.

New people come into existence all the time, though. The kids of today will be the adoptees of tomorrow. We will never run out of new blood.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments will likely fight this tooth and nail however, because crypto is currently an anti-government technology. Democratic governments represent the will of the people, and I don't think a technology can be pro-government or anti-government, it ultimately depends on what the people what. I think you are correct though for autocratic governments. Would you for example say that guns are clearly anti-government…

> Democratic governments represent the will How are people still this naive and indoctrinated. Me, earlier: > You vote what you're told to vote by the media that the state and capital dominate entirely (Think about it: how would enough people even hear about an alternative idea or candidate that they don't deem in their interest?) If you're American you get to choose between two millionaires (or sometimes billionaire…

American-centrism is also bound to be a naive and indoctrinate way to be cynical... American democracy is a shitshow, not every democracy.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#273
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democratic governments represent the will How are people still this naive and indoctrinated. Me, earlier: > You vote what you're told to vote by the media that the state and capital dominate entirely (Think about it: how would enough people even hear about an alternative idea or candidate that they don't deem in their interest?) If you're American you get to choose between two millionaires (or sometimes billionaire…

American-centrism is also bound to be a naive and indoctrinate way to be cynical... American democracy is a shitshow, not every democracy.

Europe's no different, just more expensive to lobby. We have the exact same media structure. America's just a joke and seemingly filled with the most fanatic people of the idea I was responding to, which is why I used it as an example.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we trust mining pools which can become monopolies instead... Everyone seems to not see the positive feedback loops somehow. It results in the same system in the end.

You might enjoy this: https://youtu.be/J9nv0Ol-R5Q

Summary for other people who might not know what this is:

Nicholas Weaver, Lecturer at UC Berkeley after 9 years of research in cryptocurrency, lectures on Cryptocurrency as part of CS161: Computer Security. He explains the history of the data structures, some implementation choices, then a bunch of obvious lies from Bitcoin hucksters debunked, security problems, more history/lies debunked, the fraud and bs, computational power, power consumption, blah blah, everything is there in one hour.

I think it could be a good thing to send to people so that they either come out of it knowing bitcoin is braindead or have to admit they're not capable of understanding it because they don't have the basic computer science knowledge :P

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#275

If crypto goes down in value to ten percent, or one percent of its current value, will people who believe in it admit it was a grift? If it goes up in value again, 2x or 10x its current value, will people who said it was a grift admit it was more than that? I would bet money (fiat or digital) that, in either case, most people on either side will just say "I haven't been proven right yet ", because it's just camps yel…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

scihub exists because it is protected by russian firepower, not cryptoponzi schemes.

Is that not actually worse?

Aging kinda sucks too, but alas it is biological reality.

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" - Mao

The infrastructure required to support these schemes - networks, energy, hardware - are all firmly under the control of those who have a firmer grasp on political realities on planet Earth than 'crypto' enthusiasts.

Seriously hate to break these facts to you, but past/present/future reality is about systems of "authority", and not systems of "trust". An 'authority' gives you a digital ID, a social security card, a driver's license, etc. And this authority has political power and as to how it maintains its power, what Mao said.

[p.s. Let's grant that Unicorns are 'prettier' than generic horses. Fine. That does not alter the fact that unicorns are fictional. And no, sticking a paper mache horn colored in hashes on a horse does not make it a unicorn. (see 'scam', 'fraud', 'snake oil' for related matters.)]

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#279
post #104

The issue here is actually pretty easy to grok. Crypto is a new market, so there is a historical amount of information asymmetry between consumers and producers. This brings a lot of scammers to the space. A lot of crypto is definitely bullshit, but there are some use-cases that I admire that aren’t just gambling on Shit coins.

> you’d be an idiot to ignore the realistic and adopted use-cases Ignoring the hostility, what would you list as the realistic and adopted use-cases for crypto?

You can have virtual game worlds (like a MMORPG) that can't ever be turned off, by nobody. That means your items will last forever. 50 years from now, your sword will still be on your backpack. Can't say that for company-hosted MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, because these companies might go bankrupt, close servers, update items, etc. Not a cure-the-cancer colonize-mars hype level, of course, but it is still an interesting neat thing you can do with blockchains.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#280
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’d be an idiot to ignore the realistic and adopted use-cases Ignoring the hostility, what would you list as the realistic and adopted use-cases for crypto?

You can have virtual game worlds (like a MMORPG) that can't ever be turned off, by nobody. That means your items will last forever. 50 years from now, your sword will still be on your backpack. Can't say that for company-hosted MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, because these companies might go bankrupt, close servers, update items, etc. Not a cure-the-cancer colonize-mars hype level, of course, but it is still an inter…

>You can have virtual game worlds (like a MMORPG) that can't ever be turned off, by nobody.

How?

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